Timothy's Thoughts

O ne of the things that scares me about my writing pursuit is that I might have to choose an agent someday. The more I learn, the less I like the thought of that. Ideally, you want an agent that you can get along with, but you also want someone who can stand behind your work. But when I look at some of the agents out there that seem to be great agents and are practically everyone’s short list, I am left saying “No for me.” I think that what scares me is that I see a lot of ecumenism in Christian publishing. I suppose it is to be expected because the publishers aren’t going to make money if they are too selective about which authors they choose and the conferences want to be as all inclusive as possible. We start to see a problem when we see that you can go to a Christian writing conference and they attempt to handle it like a church service. I’ve even heard of some conferences doing the communion thing. To me, that just says that the people running the conferences want to play church...

I think I’ll create my own religion. Everyone will want to join because in this religion, instead of going to heaven when we die, we’re all going to Disneyland. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Someone on Facebook said that Robin Meyers spoke at their church. I didn’t have a clue who Robin Meyers was, so I did a simple search and the first thing I found was this guy saying that using the “fear of hell” makes religion fundamentally bad and that any of the religions out there can get you to God. I asked if this was the same guy. She responded by saying that “Dr. Meyers doesn't believe in hell (and as he said today, he hopes he's right!), and he has great respect for the various spiritual traditions in which people find their way to God.” During my life, there have been a lot of things that I have hoped were true. Even though my parents never encouraged my belief in Santa Claus I wanted to believe that if I could believe hard enough then he would actually bring me all that stuff I ...

I realize the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, but have you ever stopped to think about what sin is at its most basic form? We can talk about murder, or adultery or lust, but what is it that they all have in common? At the very heart of sin is the belief that I have the right to do what I want and to make my own decisions. Look at the guy who walks into a convenience store and demands all the money. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t believe he had the right to violate the store owner’s rights. A woman stands at the alter and agrees to commit herself to her husband til death do they part, but then she decides marriage isn’t what she thought it would be and she files for divorce. She wouldn’t do that if she believe that contract she signed had power over her. Did you know that man is the only creature that has the freedom to make his own choices? The dog that sleeps at the foot of your bed, do you think he has choices? He does the same thing every day. He gets ...

Y esterday, I introduced you to the simplest story outline you can possibly have, saying that every story can be broken into four equal sections, Problem, Solution, Challenge, and Victory. Today, we’ll look at how we can expand upon that idea to create an outline we can use for a book. Dividing a book into four sections isn’t much of an outline. If you consider a book that has 200 pages and 20 chapters (for simplicity of math) that we’ve outlined using this method, each of the four sections has 50 pages and 5 chapters. There’s a lot that can happen in 5 chapters. So we would like to provide more detail to our outline. One way to start is to say that each of our four sections is a story within a story. We know how to outline a story. From yesterday, we can record the following outline in a text document: Problem: Anna needs a man. Solution: Anna gets to know an attractive man named Chris. Challenge: Anna learns Chris is engaged to Beth. Victory: Anna shows Chris that she’s a better cho...

N o author truly sits down to write without having some idea of where the story is going. A romance author doesn’t come up with a crime novel once in a while just because that’s where the characters took her. A mystery author doesn’t end up with a story with no mystery simply because the characters didn’t take him in that direction. Every author has some idea of how the story will turn out. Despite what some authors will tell you, every author begins with an outline. We know that all romance novels are basically the same animal. They begin with a woman who is in need of love. This woman finds a man. They don’t a seem to the be perfect match. Then change happens and they discover that they need each other. There are many variations on that, but that’s the story every romance author sits down to write. That is her outline. And yet, I’ve been told by many authors that they don’t outline. What they actually mean by that is that they don’t document their outline before they begin writing t...

M any years ago, I attended a meeting at which several preachers got up to speak. I was a young child at the time and I don’t remember what the other preachers spoke about, but the guy who spoke after lunch spoke about tithing. I’m sure it wasn’t anything you haven’t heard on the subject, but I was so convicted to tithe that I went home, counted all the money in my piggy bank and calculated my tithe, which I then placed in the offering plate the next Sunday. I’ve been giving more than a tithe ever since and I’ve never regretted it. The tithe, which is ten percent, is at best a good starting point for giving. The Bible tells us that God claims the tithe as his own, so if you want to give God an offering you’ll have to do better than that, but something I saw on the Internet this week indicates that people in their 20s and 30s aren’t giving. It’s been said that if church members would all tithe there would be enough money for everything the church needs to do. I realize some people have...

I t’s November and some writers are in the midst of NaNoWriMo. I had intended to skip writing about NaNoWriMo because I figured that just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean others can’t find it useful. Then I started hearing a few murmurings within the ranks. You probably know by now that I’m talking about the Laura Miller article in which she called it a waste of time and energy. While I’ve got no problem with people writing a novel in a month, some of what she has said highlights some of what I see as being wrong with the publishing industry. One of the things that NaNoWriMo encourages is for anyone to write a book. That sounds like a good idea on the surface, but many of the people writing books have no business writing books. Many of our colleagues are unlearned and ignorant. All they will ever produce through NaNoWriMo or otherwise are illiterate rantings. They do not read, but they choose to write because they believe that they can correct this problem they see in the publis...